Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2012 November 14

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November 14

Finnish free university education

How else is finland's goverment able to afford free college education for all of its citizens? I already know that high levels of taxation on the wealthy makes this possible. What other policies make it possible? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.152.23.48 (talk) 01:19, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Presumably they must have some system for preventing tuition costs from skyrocketing. Because, if the government pays for it, and doesn't put any price controls in place, that's exactly what economics says would happen. StuRat (talk) 01:46, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Finnish universities are all essentially public, so the government can control their costs. Marco polo (talk) 02:22, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Finland does not in fact have particularly “high levels of taxation on the wealthy”, nor does Finland tax its economy much more or less than most of the European Union. In Finland, as in many other countries, the very wealthy pay less tax than many middle-income people, and for the same reasons – lower taxes on capital income compared to salary income, various kinds of holding arrangements and tax planning, and so forth. Progressive income tax puts more of a burden on the upper middle class, but above that it actually gets easier. As to the question itself, the policy that keeps tuition free is that the universities are tax-funded public institutions and the government has not decided to charge for tuition, simple as that. Finland is by no means exceptional in this respect: university tuition is free in, for example, Sweden, Norway, and most of Germany, and tuition fees are pretty moderate in France. In Finland, actually, while there are no tuition fees, membership in a student union is compulsory and costs money, 92 Euros per year at the University of Helsinki in 2012 - 2013. I mention this as some people insist that university education in Finland is not therefore free.--Rallette (talk) 11:13, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

There are universities in the US where tuition, housing (as you must live on campus), books, meal plans, etc. top 92 euros a *day*. --NellieBly (talk) 18:38, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Education also is quite cheap. For the price of one F22 Raptor, you can put at least 1000 students through university with decent quality education. If states have trouble funding eduction, it's rarely due to ability, but more often due to (wrong, I'd say ;-) priorities. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:12, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Indeed. The question is doesn't make a whole lot more sense than asking "How does Finland afford to provide free grade school education to all of its ten-year olds!" Yes, education costs money, but the costs of education are not prohibitive when spread across the entire economy. They can be when an individual student is expected to foot the bill all on their own, but if there is enough money in the economy to fund it, it is usually a wise investment to do so, as the earning potential (and innovation, and entrepreneurship, and lower crime rates, more healthy and longer living people, etc.) all come about from a more educated populace. --Jayron32 18:35, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

To debunk a myth that seems to be assumed here: According to the OECD report "Education at a Glance 2012" (doi:10.1787/eag_highlights-2012-en), the percentage of the population receiving tertiary education is comparable between the United States and Finland. It certainly isn't vastly higher in Finland. The difference isn't that Finns are going to universities in higher numbers than Americans. The difference is that in America the costs of universities are borne to a higher extent by those who attended them, their parents or through voluntarily-funded bursaries, rather than by taxes. The real question is: "which groups pay higher taxes in Finland compared to the US as a consequence of their colleges' tuitionlessness?" If the answer is "people who have attended universities, their parents and people who otherwise would have given money to fund bursaries", the universities are actually funded by the same groups of people in both countries. Gabbe (talk) 11:58, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Except that, in some countries, students come or have come principally from specific social groups, so the group of people who have attended universities and their parents may be very different. Warofdreams talk 14:51, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

True. But "social group" is hard to define precisely, especially when comparing between different countries. Looking at the "Does parental education affect students' chances?" section of the report I mentioned above one sees that there's, again, hardly an enormous chasm between the US and Finland in this regard. Gabbe (talk) 15:21, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Ship of Theseus

What's the correct solution to the Ship of Theseus paradox? --168.7.238.76 (talk) 04:06, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

There is no "correct" solution; each person, organization, or government must decide how much original content is needed. There being over 50% original content is one point to draw the line, but not the only one. StuRat (talk) 04:09, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Reminds me of Richard Armour's joke about Lincoln's birthplace: "He was born in two cabins: The original, and the reconstructed." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:15, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

The correct solution is to realize that our concept of identity requires continuity of form, substance, and location -- when any one of those is taken away, the concept of identity becomes incoherent. Looie496 (talk) 04:19, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Please don’t take this as flippant, dear OP, but StuRat is right, and at any rate, our article on the subject is not intended as a puzzle. If there were a commonly recognized correct solution, it would be there in the article. There are many different approaches, not all of them listed in the article, and you are free (or rather, compelled) to take your own pick from among them based on context or personal preference or what you find convincing. (Of course, “none of the above” is a perfectly legitimate choice, too.)--Rallette (talk) 11:33, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

I can't find anything about this in the article (though some of the in-fiction examples come a little close): According to cell division, A human being's body experiences about 10,000 trillion cell divisions in a lifetime. I have the impression (is this right? -- I can't find it on Wikipedia) that every cell in a person's body is non-original, being a descendent of an original cell. I've heard it said that this raises the question of whether it's the same person as the younger version was. Most people would say yes, which hints at how people intuitively think about such issues, and at what people have in mind when they say something is "the same" entity as previously -- clearly continuity plays a key role, maybe the only role. Looie496 says our concept of identity requires continuity of form, substance, and location -- when any one of those is taken away, the concept of identity becomes incoherent. But in the case of the human, when location is changed and substance (here, the identity of the cells) is changed, we still think of it as the same person due to the continuity. Anyone have any cites on this perspective? Duoduoduo (talk) 15:33, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Actually, with the exception of a couple of small brain regions (the olfactory bulb and the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus), all of the neurons in our brains are present at birth, and new neurons are not created in adults -- see our article on neurogenesis for more information. Also let me emphasize that what matters is continuity -- change does not destroy identity as long as it is continuous change. Looie496 (talk) 03:20, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

• Anyone interested in general on the Ship of Theseus problem would do well to do some reading in the field of Ontology, the branch of philosophy dealing with questions of being and existence. The Ship of Theseus problem is primarily one of Ontology: What does it mean for an object to have a past existence, and how does past existence connect to present existence. --Jayron32 15:48, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Protestant Holy Roman Emperor

Was there ever a moment in history where there was a likely chance of the election of a Protestant Holy Roman Emperor? I mean the Habsburg succession have not always been a given and many different noble families in the past have been offered the position like Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, who was the Pope's candidate for emperor in 1519. Also I forgot that Frederick III supported Martin Luther, so lets think of people other than him. --The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 04:38, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Certainly it would have been possible: During the election of Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, there were three protestant electors: Frederick V, Elector Palatine, John George I, Elector of Saxony, and John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg. Two of these did eventually vote for the Catholic candidate Ferdinand, but it is conceivable that the three Protestant electors could have swayed a Catholic elector to their side and elected a Protestant candidate to become HRE. The one who didn't vote for Ferdinand was Frederick, who would be the "Winter King" of Bohemia, the protestant candidate for the elective throne there. During the tense negotiations over the Bohemian election, A bunch of Catholic envoys to Bohemia were thrown out of a window into a pile of horse shit precipitating the Thirty Years War. It seems less likely that after the war the Emperor would have ever been Protestant, but then again, after the war the title became tied to the Austrian Habsburgs almost exclusively, and became almost meaningless on its own; the later Emperors derived their power from their non-Imperial titles and lands. --Jayron32 15:03, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Pederasty

According to our article on pederasty, "the evanescent beauty of adolescent boys has been a topos in poetry and art, from Classical times to the Middle East, the Near East and Central Asia, imperial China, pre-modern Japan, the European Renaissance and into modern times." Assuming this is true, is there any evidence that in today's world, men are more sexually attracted to pubescent boys than to boys or men of other ages? I know that most men today would be afraid to admit, even to themselves, of any attraction they have towards underage (by our standards) boys. But if this attraction is as widespread as the article suggests, my reasoning is that a mere cultural change can't suppress it completely. --140.180.252.244 (talk) 06:08, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Is it clear that the quotation is really talking about sexual attraction, or perhaps just a broader appreciation of simple beauty? They are not the same thing. HiLo48 (talk) 11:37, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

I believe that Germaine Greer's book 'The Boy' is a significant (though by no means impartial) recent treatment of the aesthetics of male adolescence. It's also worth noting that in Ancient Greek culture, the epheboi could be as young as 14 or as old as 30, so not everything we're told about 'boys' in the era necessarily applies to teenagers. AlexTiefling (talk) 11:59, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. Was the eromenos ever as old as 30? My impression is that he really was a teenager in all ordinary circumstances. --140.180.252.244 (talk) 02:21, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Well a lot of so-called paedophile scandals (e.g. Catholic priests recently actually involved adolescent boys. 90.212.157.32 (talk) 23:22, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes. And? HiLo48 (talk) 00:23, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

And that's brought up because of Vatican's laughable defense that "Well, it's not really pedophilia, it's ephebophilia." Calling a rose by other names and all that. 164.71.1.222 (talk) 23:53, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Well no, pedophilia is different from ephebophilia, both technically and morally. Although the medical definition that our pedophilia article gives isn't exactly ideal, because quite a lot of 16-year-olds are attracted to 13-year-olds, especially if the former is a boy and the latter is a girl. --140.180.252.244 (talk) 02:21, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Actually it was brought up because the original questioner asked for "any evidence that in today's world, men are more sexually attracted to pubescent boys" and this was an example of a group of adult men attracted to pubescent boys. 90.212.157.32 (talk) 16:48, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

September 11 attacks

Hi, I was 19 when the attacks took place and have ever wondered who was the oldest passenger on board of any of the flights. Can anybody tell me? Newyorkboyy (talk) 10:28, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

What about the crew of the flights?
Sleigh (talk) 10:32, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Our article Casualties of the September 11 attacks says the following:

"The average age of the dead in New York City was 40. The dead included eight children: five on American Airlines Flight 77 ranging in age from 3 to 11, three on United Airlines Flight 175 ages 2, 3, and 4. The youngest victim was a 2 1/2 year-old child on Flight 175, the oldest an 85 year-old passenger on Flight 11. In the buildings, the youngest victim was 18 and the oldest was 79."

Although that is in the section about the WTC, Flight 77 was the one which struck the Pentagon, so it is possible these figures are comprehensive of the entire series of attacks. AlexTiefling (talk) 11:31, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

His name was Robert Grant Norton, of Lubec, Maine. [1] --NellieBly (talk) 18:13, 14 November 2012 (UTC)